TGS: How Dragon Ball Z for Kinect Misses the Point

The entire appeal of motion gaming is immersion -- ideally, Kinect would amplify player agency by more actively involving you in a given experience. Dance Central excels here, in particular. Using your body rather than thumb flicks and trigger pulls to control a character should make you feel as though you've become someone else.

The potential to empower players in Dragon Ball Z for Kinect is enormous, but actually playing it is a constant reminder of how much fun you should be having.

The first-person combat works like you'd expect: Punching the air fires projectiles or smacks your up-close enemy, crouching dodges incoming attacks and powers up your hero, and familiar poses unleash special attacks when you've filled your power meter. That's pretty much the extent of how Dragon Ball Z for Kinect functions, and that simplicity in itself would be a considerable issue, never mind that it doesn't work well.

Gestures are so similar, and player input is so frantic, that Kinect can't actually register the moves properly. I tried to boost my power, but it misread the crouched position as a dodge. In putting my fingers on my forehead to let loose Picollo's Beam Cannon, the game thought I was trying to punch. Arm movements are sensitive and the speed of the fight is chaotic, which is a disastrous recipe. I watched multiple players fail a fight because their Kamehamehas weren't getting picked up, or their dodges registered as power charging, before becoming a victim of the incompetence myself.

The other problem is that it's just not terribly entertaining to play. Your actions don't really interact with the world or characters, so you spend a lot of time watching. Did you punch the air fast enough to trigger the win or lose animation? Great job, take a break and watch Goku throw Vegeta through a mountain for the next 20 seconds. Repeat. What could possibly be interesting about this as someone putting their entire body into the equation?

It's difficult to get excited, or remain optimistic, about a game in such poor shape as Dragon Ball Z for Kinect. It's a conceptual misfire with the kind of poor execution that's become unfortunately commonplace in Kinect games. And if it's no fun to play in the first 10 minutes, why should you pay $60 to experience it for hours longer?

Use caution with this one.

Mitch Dyer is an Associate Editor for IGN's Xbox 360 team. He’s also quite Canadian. Read his ramblings on Twitter and follow him on IGN.